


delayed reaction

by rhodophoros



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Insecure Keith (Voltron), M/M, Nightmares, Post-Episode: s02e08 The Blade of Marmora
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-27
Updated: 2018-03-27
Packaged: 2019-04-13 17:31:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,850
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14117355
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rhodophoros/pseuds/rhodophoros
Summary: Keith lets go, Shiro remembers, and they both hold on.





	delayed reaction

The nightmare was quiet that night, nothing like the wrenching terrors born from a luxite blade, full of marching drones and Zarkon’s laughter. Instead it was a lurching silence, a grey desert, an empty shack. The sky was empty, too, devoid of the stars that had tugged on his and Shiro’s souls til they’d both been dragged to ruin.

Keith tried to yell into the black, but the silence stuck in his throat, and even the wind blowing over the dunes made no sound. He looked, frantic, but saw no one. He would be alone in this wasteland, a quiet forever.

_Then you’ve chosen to be alone._

He woke with a broken breath, willed his lungs to still themselves. The sheets, Altean and softer than any fabric he’d ever felt on Earth, were undisturbed. Shiro was still beside him, sleeping, breathing. Keith turned, wincing as it tweaked his days-old injuries from the trials, and leaned his forehead against Shiro’s shoulder-blade, pushed lightly into the softness of his sleep shirt. On its own, his breath hitched.

He was amid his battle with tears when he felt the muscle beneath his forehead tense.

“Keith?”

Shiro had been a deep sleeper, back at the Garrison; he’d had to keep three alarms just to make wake-up call. The Galra had changed that, as they had many things. And now Keith was one of them.

“It’s nothing.” Keith tried to control the waver in his voice, but felt it settle warm and dissonant in the pit of his stomach. “Go back to sleep.”

His voice cracked on the last word, and the jig was up.

Shiro shifted to turn around, and then there would be no way for Keith to hide his tears, his weakness. He turned his head into his hand, feeling the shame burn more tears out of him: a vicious cycle.

“Hey.” Shiro’s voice was a gentle rasp, and when the fingers of his right hand, his Galra hand, moved to cradle Keith’s jaw, Keith couldn’t help but lean into them.

“Keith, can you look at me? Please?”

Keith let his hand fall from his face, and felt a metal thumb swipe at the tear tracks on his cheeks.

Shiro’s face was pinched in concern. “Wanna tell me what you’re thinking?” he asked, and Keith wondered at how he was able to radiate such gentle kindness, all for him. It was an ache that settled in his bones.

“I just—” he tried to say, “the trials and—“ but he felt his eyes burn, his face contort, and his shuddering breath curled into a sob.

Shiro’s hand moved to cradle his skull and push him into an embrace, and against the warmth of Shiro’s chest Keith let himself be selfish, let himself go just that once, and broke into open weeping.

Shiro’s hand stroked the nape of his neck, curled through his hair, and he realized Shiro was speaking, low and gentle.

“—never leave you like that, Keith, baby, never leave you alone like that. I’d have fought beside you if they’d let me, I nearly did—“

Keith heard the break in his voice, remembered Shiro’s anger, his rage at the Blades even as Red had been beating the base down from the outside, even once he found out Keith was Galra, that the blood of the people who took everything from him ran through Keith’s veins.

And here he was now, trying to comfort Keith, who could do nothing back.

_You’re only thinking of yourself, as usual!_

Keith pressed harder into the only person who’d ever come back to him, and let himself empty.

 

* * *

 

They stayed like that for a while, Shiro murmuring into Keith’s hair and holding him, cradling him as his breath moved from broken to whole again.

Shiro remembered the day of the trials, bringing a rapidly crashing Keith onto the Castle-ship, stripping him of the Marmorite suit, hearing his hissing breath as the fabric pulled at dried blood, at that awful laceration over Keith’s shoulder.

He’d been beautiful, even as bruises had spilled over his skin like ink in water, even as his jaw had pulsed tight with the effort not to cry, to show any weakness.

God, how Shiro had loved him, even as it burned him to see. He had kept it in so long, sealed it behind concerns of propriety, first in the Garrison, now as his commanding officer. After Kerberos he’d never thought he’d see Keith again, and then when by a miracle he’d returned, he’d told himself to be thankful, even as the familiar ache came to rest at the base of his spine, that he got to have Keith at all.

But then the Blade happened, and the trials, and he realized they had the same fears, mirrored, and maybe they had more in common than Shiro had ever hoped.

So before he let Keith step into one of the Castle’s healing pods, he’d taken his head in his hands, fingers in his hair, thumbs over his cheeks, and kissed him on the forehead, light and chaste. “I’ll be here when you wake up,” he’d said, and smiled, and Keith’s eyes had shimmered, slate-blue and wet, but he’d smiled back, a mirror, and that was everything.

The healing cycle had been set at only a few vargas, belying the day they had just gone through. Shiro had known he should have gotten the team together, restored unity after the reveal of Keith’s blood in Red’s hangar, but he couldn’t be bothered. If they couldn’t see Keith for who he was, past the heritage he’d always had but never known, they wouldn’t be Paladins of Voltron.

He was leaning against the infirmary’s console when he’d heard the swish of a door, and there was Coran, whose greeting smile didn’t quite reach his eyes. He’d walked up to the console, said “I should probably recalibrate the pods for Keith. Galra physiology is a lot different from Alteans’ or Earthlings’, it wouldn’t do for us to give a Paladin substandard care, hmm?”

He’d started tapping at the console. “You don’t hate him, then?” Shiro had asked, remembering the look in Allura’s eyes when she’d learned, how cold they’d gone. He remembered how Keith had looked away, ashamed, and had to quiet the answering anger.

“No, and Allura doesn’t either. Mind you, she might take a few quintents to show it …” and Coran had sighed. “She’s young, you know. The Galra were our allies once, but I doubt she remembers much of that, just the death and destruction. She’ll come around.”

They’d lapsed into quiet, before Coran made one final tap against the console. “And there, newly recalibrated. I’ll leave you to it, then.” They’d nodded at each other, polite, and Coran had left.

Keith’s sleep seemed easier, then, and Shiro had watched as the wounds knit themselves together, the bruises faded, though there was no way to prevent the shoulder wound from scarring. Even Altean tech couldn’t heal scars.

Shiro knew that well.

The cycle had ended; the pod’s glass skin fluttered out of existence just as Keith’s eyes began to stir. Had his eyelashes always been so pretty? Then they’d opened, dark and deep even in sleep, and Shiro let the love tug at the corners of his mouth. “Hey,” he’d said.

Keith had blinked in response, then stepped forward one, two paces and fell against Shiro’s chest. Shiro had reached, cradled his neck, woven fingers through his hair. “Let’s get you to bed,” he’d said, heart hurting.

Keith had, as always, obeyed.

They’d slept in Shiro’s tiny bed, crushed against each other, Keith’s breathing hot on Shiro’s skin, and Shiro had thanked any god that was listening for the boy’s heart beating against his ribs, inside and out. In the morning they’d woken tangled in one another, and Keith had hovered over him, timid as a bird, before pressing his mouth to Shiro’s.

And Shiro, awed, cradled his head, and kissed back, and from then on they’d come together in every way they could.

But, as in all things, Keith had given, given, given, and never took, not til it broke him.

Keith moved back, pressed his hand against the mattress to get up, and they disengaged, sat on the ends of the bed, bare feet against the floor.

“I’m sorry,” said Keith, and Shiro looked at him, at the sharp arch of his back that curled under its black cloth, and wondered if he’d always carried so much shame, so much hurt.

“You’ve got nothing to be sorry for.”

Keith snorted, light. Wrong words, then. “You don’t need this on top of everything else, Shiro.” He turned, his face hard, like for battle. If only it was that simple.

Shiro brought a face to his cheek, his human hand this time. “I want this, Keith. I want you.”

Keith’s eyes, ever-sharp, scanned his face, like he was looking for a lie. Of course he was; it sent a curl of frustration through Shiro, even as he knew how reasonable this distrust was, poisoning Keith’s heart. Words weren’t cutting it.

So he did what he best; he made a snap decision.

“Take off your shirt.”

Keith tilted his head, quizzical. Shiro ignored how cute it was.

“Not like that, Keith. Trust me, take off your shirt.”

Keith looked unconvinced, but ever a good soldier, he did what his CO told him. Shiro did the same, and let his undershirt fall to the floor. Shiro felt a pinch behind a sternum when he saw the gash on Keith’s shoulder, no longer an angry pink, but still large and dark against his skin. Now he knew how Keith felt bedding the champion of the Galra. In more ways than one, he supposed.

“Now what?” asked Keith.

“Patience—“

“Yields focus?” Keith was smirking. That was good, and bad, but mostly good.

Rolling his eyes, Shiro opened his arms. “Come here,” he said, and he met Keith halfway.

Shiro brought Keith to sit on his lap, their thighs touching along their lengths, and brought their chests together, curled his arms around him, and Keith clung back like he always did, like Shiro could vanish at any moment. Not unreasonable, after Kerberos and in the middle of a war, but it still sent tension through Keith’s wiry frame.

Shiro idly stroked through his hair, wondered whether Galra liked being pet, maybe? But then Keith shuddered on an exhale, and pressed his nose into Shiro’s shoulder, and Shiro felt something loosen in his chest, like a bone clicking back into place, and he smiled.

“Love you,” Keith whispered in his ear, and he felt it burn, a good burn that time; those words in Keith’s mouth were rarer than scaultrite.

“I love you too, Keith.”

They stayed like that, skin touching skin, breathing the other’s air, and Shiro didn’t even remember when sleep finally took them.

 

* * *

 

The next morning was kind, as next mornings went, and when Keith woke up to Shiro’s arms around him, his tousled hair and sleepy smile, he smiled back, and that?

That was everything.

**Author's Note:**

> Come find me on [tumblr](http://rhodophoros.tumblr.com)


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